


Take Me Home Tonight: Brian

by oiuytrewq36



Series: Soundtrack Trilogy, combined and expanded [9]
Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 13:14:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28992759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oiuytrewq36/pseuds/oiuytrewq36
Summary: Justin is warm, so warm, his small rough hands on my waist, then my shoulders, moving across my back. He keeps doing sweet couple-y shit like kissing me on the cheek and stealing leftover pasta from my plate, too, and I’m not remotely close to being able to care, because it may have only been two weeks since the last time we were together but he feels so good next to me that I can’t focus on anything else.Well, anything other than that and the fact that he’s clearly not quite okay, anyway.
Relationships: Brian Kinney/Justin Taylor (Queer as Folk)
Series: Soundtrack Trilogy, combined and expanded [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2077905
Comments: 6
Kudos: 29





	Take Me Home Tonight: Brian

**Author's Note:**

> Sort of meant as a companion to the previous piece, but also readable alone

Justin is warm, so warm, his small rough hands on my waist, then my shoulders, moving across my back. He keeps doing sweet couple-y shit like kissing me on the cheek and stealing leftover pasta from my plate, too, and I’m not remotely close to being able to care, because it may have only been two weeks since the last time we were together but he feels so good next to me that I can’t focus on anything else.

Well, anything other than that and the fact that he’s clearly not quite okay, anyway.

The signs are subtle enough that I doubt anyone else has noticed, maybe not even Debbie, but I see it. He’s fake-smiling, drinking too much, and avoiding half the questions the others ask him. I just do my best to keep a clear head and take a mature, considered approach to figuring out what’s up with him.

(Yeah, right.)

What I actually do is get slightly less shitfaced than he is and make out with him in an armchair after dinner and try my very best to think about anything other than the distance that came into his voice when Blake asked him how his work was going. It works pretty well; he is, after all, beautiful and sexy and fairly obviously trying to hold me off from asking what’s wrong, so I’m more than content to let him lick down my throat and mess up my hair while the others take turns ignoring us and coughing meaningfully nearby.

“You wanna take me hooome,” Justin’s saying, slightly singsong, smiling right up close to my ear. “You wanna _fuuuuuuuck_ me.”

I roll my eyes. “Do you need a signed contract?”

“Couldn’t hurt,” he says. Over on the couch, Emmett laughs.

I touch Justin’s cheek. “Want to get out of here?” I ask, and he nods.

Things don’t feel normal by the time we get back to the loft, but it’s easier to be out of the crowded family atmosphere anyway. Justin hauls me through the door by my jacket lapels and kisses me ferociously up against one of the beams, so I push away the bad feeling I have in the bottom of my stomach and let him pull me up to the bed.

The sex is- regular, I guess, for us, by which I mean fucking fantastic by anyone else’s standards. Justin pants on my jaw and carves angry lines into my hips with his fingernails as I fuck him the way I always do after we’ve been apart, hard enough that we’ll both feel it tomorrow and know it’s real.

Then we’re done, for the moment, and the strangeness is back.

Justin’s rolled away from me to the side of the bed, so I put an arm around him from behind and kiss his ear.

“Is something wrong?”

He huffs a humorless laugh. “Can’t hide anything from you, can I?”

I start to press gentle spirals into his shoulders with my thumbs, trying to work out the knots in the muscle. “I just want to help you be happy.”

He sighs and turns slowly over, and I see that his eyes are full of tears.

“Hey,” I say. “Hey. What’s wrong?”

He shakes his head and presses his face into my neck, and I don’t know what the hell to do so I just hold him.

“I-” he says, finally, lifting his face so he’s speaking to my chin. “There’s a lot. I’m working so hard on finding a gallery that’s willing to show me, and none of them have said yes, and the coffee shop is having me work extra hours this month, and I don’t know what to say to my mom or Deb or Lindsay or anyone when they call wanting to hear about all the great things they think I’ve don’t, and-”

His voice breaks. “I think I’m letting people down. I think I’m letting _you_ down, Brian, when you ripped up all the plans you’d made for us, and you did it for me, to let me go out on my own, and I love you so fucking much but sometimes I don’t know if I even deserve to feel it-”

I shush him, as gently as I can, but I need to stop him, before he spirals even more.

I wrap an arm around his shoulders. “I need to tell you something,” I say. “Okay? I think you already know it, to be honest, but maybe it’ll help to hear me say it.”

“Okay.”

“You,” I tell him, “are the love of my goddamn life. I will never, _never_ feel this way about anyone but you, Sunshine, and that doesn’t change if you’re a big success or if you’re not, or if you stay in New York or if you decide you want to, I don’t know, fuck off to St. Tropez and sell to tourists.” He makes a quivering sound and strokes my side, nodding his head softly and rhythmically, his hair brushing my neck. I kiss the top of his head, a few times. “And if there is- fucking _anything_ that I can do, that I can give you, that’ll make you feel better, that’ll make you happy, please, tell me, and I’ll do it. Anything, and I mean it.”

He makes a soft noise and kisses my cheek. “I am happy,” he says, smiling, but his eyes are too bright. “I’m so happy, Brian, this, you- being with you like this, loving you like this is all I’ve ever wanted. But I guess I’m going through a rough patch right now. Or something.”

I pull him closer against me. “Want to get a shrink?”

He sighs. “I can’t really-”

I glare at him, pointedly. “Afford it? Justin.”

He looks at me with fragile watery eyes, and there is absolutely nothing in the world I wouldn’t do to reassure him at this moment. This is why I exist, I think, the meaning of my miserable little life; if I can give him what he needs, help him be who he needs to be, then I’ll be fulfilled.

I take his hand. “Would you- let me pay? For a few sessions, at least, just to see if it helps? As a gift. We can call it retroactive payment for some of my shittier birthday celebrations.”

He laughs softly and presses himself into me. “I don’t want to be a burden.”

“Jesus,” I say. “Sunshine. I want you to tell me these things. I want you whether or not you’re a burden.”

“Really?” he says.

Time for honesty, seems like. Damn Debbie Novotny. “I want you, period. And if we can talk about this shit, it helps me know I’m not the thing that’s making you sad.”

He bites on a gentle desperate sound, then, and buries his face in my chest. “Okay,” he says. 

I stroke his hair. “Okay?”

He kisses me, very sweet and soft, his body melding gradually to mine. “Okay.”


End file.
